Solved Lost access to BIOS after adding a 2nd M.2 SSD

Hello.

I have a working desktop (based on ASRock B660M-DHV) with Windows 11 Canary, build 27758.1000.

The boot disk is still a PCIe M.2 SSD (1TB) and I also have in the box a 4TB SATA SSD.
I used to get the option for BIOS at startup and access to UEFI worked fine.

A few hours ago, I (the shop actually) added to the system a 2nd PCIe M.2 SSD (4TB) to take the place of the 1TB one (but with a non-Canary version).

As they told me, the 2 M.2 disks sort of piggy-back. The 1TB stayed in the same position and still has high priority in the bus. After the 4TB gets formatted and usable, if I don't like the speed results, they would flip the 2 M.2 disks so the 4TB will get the higher priority. But that's for the future...

As it stands now, I brought the computer home to format the new disk, install Win11, somehow transfer my programs over to the new SSD, and either keep or cleanup the 1TB. I prepared a Rufus bootable with Win 11 to assist in the formatting.

And then I got stuck.

No access to the BIOS. No option for it during bootup from the active 1TB disk, and couldn't even get to it by going through the currently installed Windows Settings.

For some reason, I boot and work fine from a working Win11 on the 1TB disk but somehow it doesn't find the UEFI partition on the same disk.

So how could I possibly proceed and make the Rufus USB disk bootable, followed by the rest of the plan?

For info, I post the Disk Management's drive layout. I don't remember how it looked before the new M.2 addition.

The Disk 0 is my data 4TB SATA SSD.
Disk 1 is the new 4TB M.2
Disk 2 is the old 1TB M.2 that boots into Canary.
Disk 3 is the Rufus USB disk.

Thank you in advance for any suggestions or changes/improvements to my plan.

Why did you created a Rufus Win 11 USB installation drive if you could use the MCT to create the Win 11 USB installation drive.? Your computer is compatible with Win 11 and you don't need to use a workaround.

Windows can be installed in two ways: Legacy-MBR or UEFI-GPT
To install as Legacy-MBR you must boot the installation drive as Legacy
To install as UEFI-GPT you must boot the installation drive as UEFI.

As you have a UEFI BIOS, you should install as UEFI-GPT
Detach any other drives (SATA or Power cable) from the MB.

During POST, press F8 or F11 when the system starts to launch the boot menu. You will see two options for the USB drive. USB UEFI (Name) and USB (Name). Select USB UEFI (Name) to install as UEFI-GPT.
Go to install and delete ALL partitions on the main drive till you have one and only one unallocated space and then proceed.
If you don't want to use MS account, don't enable updates or connect to the internet during installation.

You can use the boot menu to select a boot device, such as a USB drive.

If you want to use a local account What is "oobe\bypassnro"

I may be way off in my understanding of your post. Here are my observations.

First and foremost you should be able to enter Asrock bios by using either F2 or DEL as soon as you see the splash screen. Try F2 first. If it does not enter bios, then try DEL.

If it is your intention to clean install Windows 11 on the 4 tb drive you will have to remove your current primary drive and replace it with the 4tb drive because your BCD should be written to the new primary drive.

Also disconnect the cable to your data drive (drive 0) until the install is complete. The only drive you want connected during a clean install is the new system drive.
Use this tutorial Clean Install Windows 11

glasskuter said:

The only drive you want connected during a clean install is the new system drive.

Click to expand...

Unless you have like two dozen hard drives running in your PC and you know what you're doing But ideally, yes. Best not to risk confusion because stuff happens.

If you're letting the "shop" add your new drive(s) you need to be very careful how you proceed.
Your Boot drive(using the preferred NVMe drive) should be in M.2 slot M2_1. The PCIe lanes are directly connected to the CPU for the faster transfer speeds. M.2 slot M2_2 is using the Chipset PCIe lanes so this should be more or less used for a Data type drive. Also if M2_2 slot is populated(meaning it has a drive attached) then Sata port 3 will be disabled so you should ensure Sata port 3 is not used/connected to a Sata drive.

I'll add more later.

Looks like for ASROCK motherboard you want to hit the F11 key to bring up the Boot Menu which "should" allow you to select the Win11 bootable USB stick you made. Basically you need to constantly hit the F11 key at power on to get it to work.

Scannerman said:

Unless you have like two dozen hard drives running in your PC and you know what you're doing But ideally, yes. Best not to risk confusion because stuff happens.

Click to expand...

If you don't detach ALL boot able drives, the installer will install Windows on the target drive and the boot manager on the drive that already has Windows and there is nothing you can do.
If you want an independent boot able drive it is mandatory that you detach all boot able drives.

Scannerman said:

Unless you have like two dozen hard drives running in your PC and you know what you're doing But ideally, yes. Best not to risk confusion because stuff happens.

Click to expand...

Sometimes Windows outsmarts you and does things you don't expect even though you "know what you're doing".

Thank you all for the valuable information.

I tried all the suggestions I could, except the ones that required unplugging components. Pain in the small of the back lately and that made it painful.
I tried it with all internal drives connected but it was easy to differentiate among them.

BamainArk confirmed what the 'shop' had told me. I might flip the M.2 positions when I'm done with this change. Also, for this particular mobo, the BIOS access key is F2 and maybe F11 (it behaves the same). Any other key is ignored and the system boots into Windows.

As for detaching other bootable drives, it's not necessary (but it is much safer) if you use a bootable Windows USB. When I booted up the USB stick, it saw the old M.2 with Windows in it and also saw the new M.2 as empty. It let me choose between the two (using names like Volume 2 and Volume 11 -- 11 sounded more logical and it was the right one as I saw later in the process).

Win 11 was installed eventually in the new M.2 using the account and product key from the one in the old M.2. So far I can boot and use whichever I select in the BIOS.

It sounds simple now and exactly what I was trying before, so why it didn't work earlier?

User error! Mine, I regret to admit.

The connected monitor has both HDMI and Display Port. Its BIOS setting is set to 'Auto'. The old M.2 Windows I believe is set to Display Port (I'll verify after I boot back into it).
Last night I paid attention and it was strange that I was just seeing a 'no signal' during boot.

"maybe the 'shop' not having a Display Port monitor at hand, used HDMI and for some reason they changed the 'auto' setting"...

I checked my monitor connections, followed the cables with a flashlight, and found out that I had both cables connected just for the heck of it. There goes my reasoning.
But not quite. I pulled the desktop out, verified the monitor connections and found the Display Port to not be fully plugged in!! Lots of swearing ensued at this point.
Swearing on one hand, but the UEFI BIOS in vivid color on the screen :)
(the monitor was still at 'auto' by the way).

The new Windows defaults behaved a little strange.
Without changes, the desktop came up fine.
I opened with Notepad a text file to find some info in it, the file was opened but Notepad wouldn't maximize so I can search.
Its popup had ended up to the HDMI output.
Having the display duplicated to both connectors, fixed this problem.

After that it was easy. Hopefully I'll find some program/registry transfer utility to make it even easier.

All in all, pretty happy with the progress.

I appreciate all your help. Great to see people who know their stuff.

Regards.

kanenas said:

BamainArk confirmed what the 'shop' had told me. I might flip the M.2 positions when I'm done with this change. Also, for this particular mobo, the BIOS access key is F2 and maybe F11 (it behaves the same). Any other key is ignored and the system boots into Windows.

Click to expand...

Just an observation but according to the Disk Management screenshot you posted I would assume the preferred drive(the 4tb one) is already in the correct M.2 slot. However cannot be sure. I would think M2_1 would be labeled as Disk 1 while M2_2 would be labeled as Disk 2. A visual inspection would verify. Most motherboards seem to prioritize SATA connections first(i.e. Disk 0) followed by M.2 slots. So the disk ordering/labeling can be confusing.

Megahertz said:

Why did you created a Rufus Win 11 USB installation drive if you could use the MCT to create the Win 11 USB installation drive.? Your computer is compatible with Win 11 and you don't need to use a workaround.

Click to expand...

For me the number one reason is that I find it easier to bypass the need to have an MS account. Then there's the option to not use Device Encryption and/or Bitlocker.

BamaInArk said:

Just an observation but according to the Disk Management screenshot you posted I would assume the preferred drive(the 4tb one) is already in the correct M.2 slot. However cannot be sure. I would think M2_1 would be labeled as Disk 1 while M2_2 would be labeled as Disk 2. A visual inspection would verify. Most motherboards seem to prioritize SATA connections first(i.e. Disk 0) followed by M.2 slots. So the disk ordering/labeling can be confusing.

Click to expand...

I believe the new one was plugged over the older M.2.
If the old M.2 was using the lower priority slot, the shop (same one) messed up when they set up the desktop.
Everything is possible. The old M.2 drive didn't break any speed records after all.
Holidays now and everybody's gone, so I'll call them after Tuesday to clarify it.

Megahertz said:

If you don't detach ALL boot able drives, the installer will install Windows on the target drive and the boot manager on the drive that already has Windows and there is nothing you can do.
If you want an independent boot able drive it is mandatory that you detach all boot able drives.

Click to expand...

I don't dispute that. Technically, all drives are "bootable" if they're functional. What matters is how they are configured. When I installed Windows 11 on my Work Station I only disconnected about one third of my hard drives: Turned off the externals, unplugged my Linux and associated storage, left my 7 Win in RAID 0 alone, and RAID 10 arrays alone, and RAID 1 arrays alone. They did not suffer from this. Again, it really does matter how they are configured to work. Nonetheless I did agree that in the case of the OP this was advisable.

kanenas said:

I checked my monitor connections, followed the cables with a flashlight, and found out that I had both cables connected just for the heck of it. There goes my reasoning.
But not quite. I pulled the desktop out, verified the monitor connections and found the Display Port to not be fully plugged in!! Lots of swearing ensued at this point.
Swearing on one hand, but the UEFI BIOS in vivid color on the screen :)
(the monitor was still at 'auto' by the way).

Click to expand...

Ha! I'm sure there are more people in this forum who have made similar errors than they would care to admit. I know I have done so. lol
Glad to learn it worked out for you!

Scannerman said:

I don't dispute that. Technically, all drives are "bootable" if they're functional. What matters is how they are configured. When I installed Windows 11 on my Work Station I only disconnected about one third of my hard drives: Turned off the externals, unplugged my Linux and associated storage, left my 7 Win in RAID 0 alone, and RAID 10 arrays alone, and RAID 1 arrays alone. They did not suffer from this. Again, it really does matter how they are configured to work. Nonetheless I did agree that in the case of the OP this was advisable.

Click to expand...

I had it happen to me years ago. I setup a dual boot Windows system using separate drives for the Windows install. Because I didn't disconnect the original Windows drive first the boot loader was installed to it instead of drive 2. I didn't know until I decided to remove the original drive and Windows wouldn't boot because there was no boot loader..

Winuser said:

I had it happen to me years ago. I setup a dual boot Windows system using separate drives for the Windows install. Because I didn't disconnect the original Windows drive first the boot loader was installed to it instead of drive 2. I didn't know until I decided to remove the original drive and Windows wouldn't boot because there was no boot loader..

Click to expand...

Been there, done that, burned the T-Shirt!

Winuser said:

I had it happen to me years ago. I setup a dual boot Windows system using separate drives for the Windows install. Because I didn't disconnect the original Windows drive first the boot loader was installed to it instead of drive 2. I didn't know until I decided to remove the original drive and Windows wouldn't boot because there was no boot loader..

Click to expand...

Perhaps the best bit of utility software I ever purchased a license for is MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro Ultimate. With this software I can write all my boot partitions wherever I want them to be. In my case it really doesn't matter if my Win11 drive boots off my Win 7 Ultimate. If I don't like it I can always edit the BCD. There is software for this also. Of course, having a solid backup strategy helps. Ideally, every OS should have it's own boot strap and this is why it is advisable to disconnect drives that have operating systems on them already when installing another OS. Disconnecting all drives when you have over two dozen drives running on your system is not usually necessary as the OS being installed will only select one drive to boot from.

Scannerman said:

Perhaps the best bit of utility software I ever purchased a license for is MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro Ultimate. With this software I can write all my boot partitions wherever I want them to be. In my case it really doesn't matter if my Win11 drive boots off my Win 7 Ultimate. If I don't like it I can always edit the BCD.

Click to expand...

If I hadn't decided to use the original drive for something else it would never had been a problem. I know it was me but for whatever reason I couldn't get any of the suggestions for fixing the Windows boot partition to work. Even the option to fix the boot partition in Macrium didn't work. Macrium did fix the problem but not the way I wanted. I made a system image and then did a clean install. Once I knew Windows was booting I restored the C: partition image over the new C: partition.

Winuser said:

Once I knew Windows was booting I restored the C: partition image over the new C: partition.

Click to expand...

Yeah, it's a bit of a pain to have to do that but at least it can be done. This is also a reason why dual booting can be very handy. Alas, it would seem Windows wants to kill this too.

Scannerman said:

Yeah, it's a bit of a pain to have to do that but at least it can be done. This is also a reason why dual booting can be very handy. Alas, it would seem Windows wants to kill this too.

Click to expand...

I think your right about MS wanting to eventually kill the option to dual boot. If I can find the tray for my dive caddy I can just switch out the boot drive. I know I still have it. It's just a question of where did I put it.

One of the ways around this is a switch box. They tend to be a favourite among those who are into PC repair but they work just the same for enthusiasts and hobbyists. Mine might be part of the reason I'm still running old mechanical drives that date as far back as 14 years. Why waste power?


Of course, those modern day aquariums they call computer cases can't house one of these easily because they have no front bays but for those who are keen on utility this is the cat's meow.